Edictive is a cloud film production management app. To take case of casting, budgets, call-sheets, distribution, location management. The site is a great way to manage your production from pre to post, as well as manage and distribute.

one thing that really bugs is when people headcanon their fave characters to be POC the rest of the fandom suddenly tries to justify why that makes sense within that character context like “oh well the author did say that this character has [insert feature] or grew up in a certain way so it would totally make sense!!” as if the context has to support such a headcanon or it just isn’t acceptable. i mean why can’t a character just be a POC just because?? you have to realize that POC live in all types of situations and manners, have wide ranges of appearances, and basically aren’t confined to whatever context clues you’re given in a book. any character you thought was white can be a POC so it really doesn’t help if you need to reassure yourself that they’re a POC bc of course the author subtly hinted it in that one sentence so that’s obviously why they’re a POC.

Between free speech and bureaucracy: Anarchist political theory and a way forward for Reddit.

By David Banks

Reddit’s co-founder Steve Huffman, who is currently taking over CEO responsibilities in the wake of Ellen Pao’s resignation, has started doing these Fireside AMAs where he makes some sort of edict and all of the reddit users react and ask clarifying questions. Just today he made an interesting statement about the future of “free speech” in general and certain controversial subreddits in particular. The full statement is here but I want to focus on this specific line where he describes how people were banned in the beginning of Reddit versus the later years when the site became popular:

Occasionally, someone would start spewing hate, and I would ban them. The community rarely questioned me. When they did, they accepted my reasoning: “because I don’t want that content on our site.”

As we grew, I became increasingly uncomfortable projecting my worldview on others. More practically, I didn’t have time to pass judgement on everything, so I decided to judge nothing.

This all comes at the heels of some interesting revelations by former, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong saying that Ellen Pao was actually the person in the board room championing free speech and it was Huffman, fellow co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and others that really wanted to clamp down on the hate speech. So that’s just a big side dish of delicious schadenfreude that’s fun to nibble on

But those quotes bring up some questions that are absolutely crucial to something Britney Summit-Gil posted here a few days ago, namely that Reddit finds itself in a paradox where revolting against the administration forces users to recognize that “Reddit is less like a community and more like a factory,” and that the free speech they rally around is an anathema to their other great love: the free market.

What structures this contradiction, what sets everyone up at cross-purposes, also has a lot to do with Huffman’s reticence to ban people as the site grew. After all, why wouldHuffman feel “increasingly uncomfortable” making unilateral banning decisions as the site grew, and why was his default position then be “to judge nothing”? Why does it, all of a sudden, become unfair or inappropriate to craft a community or even a product with the kind of decisiveness that comes with “I just don’t like it”?

The answer to all of this comes out of two philosophic ideas: One is the Enlightenment model of reason that we still use to undergird our concepts of legitimacy and rhetorical persuasiveness. That big decisions that effect lots of people should be argued out and have practical and utilitarian reasons and not be based on the whims of an individual. That’s what kings did and that sort of authority is arbitrary even if the results seem desirable.

The second is relatively more recent but still fundamental to the point of vanishing: the idea of the modern society as being governed by bureaucracies that have written rules that are followed by everyone. The rule of law, not of individuals. Bureaucracies are nice when they work because if you look at the written down rules, you have a fairly good idea of how to behave and what to expect from others. It’s a very enticing prospect that is rarely fully experienced.

Huffman doesn’t say as much but this is essentially how we went from fairly common-sense decisions about good governance to free speech fanaticism: not choosing to ban is the absence of arbitrary authority. When you have a site that lets you vote on things it feels like a decision to stop imposing order from the top is making room for democratic order from below.

But this is closer to the kind of majoritarian tyranny that even the architects of the American constitution were worried about. Voting in the 1700s was something that only aristocrats were qualified to do. Leave it to rabble and you would have chaos. That’s why they built a bicameral legislature that originally featured a senate with members appointed by state governments.

It should also be said that one of the oldest laws in the United States is that Congress can’t make laws that specifically target a single individual or organization. That’s why those efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011 were immediately dismissed as unconstitutional. Laws have to apply to everyone equally.

And so what Huffman is presently faced with is a problem of liberal (lowercase L) and modern state governance. How do you write broad laws that classify r/coontown without just saying “I ban r/coontown”? Unfortunately, this is also the biggest fuel line to the flames of fear that banning even detestable subreddits are a threat to free speech in general. This is, fundamentally, why it even makes sense to argue that banning an outwardly and explicitly racist subreddit can threaten the integrity of other subreddits either in the present or sometime in the future. Laws apply to everyone equally.

So if Reddit wants to get itself out of this paradox, I say dispense with liberalism all-together. At the very least come up with some sort of aspirational progressive vision of what kind of community you want to have and persuade others that they should work to achieve it. This sort of move is the biggest departure that anarchist political theory takes from mainstream liberalism: that communities can agree on the features of a future utopia and govern in the present as if you are already free to live that future utopia. Organizing humans with blanket laws forces you to explain the obvious, namely that hateful people suck and should be persuaded to act otherwise if they wish to remain part of a community that is meaningful to them.

Right now Huffman and the rest of the Reddit administration have come up with some strange and inelegant ways of dealing with the present problem. They make all these dubious distinctions between action and speech; between inciting harm and just abstracting wishing it on people; and lots of blanket “I know it when I see it” sorts of decency rules. Under liberalism redditors would be right to demand very specific descriptions of the “I know it when I see it” kinds of moments.

But if prominent members were to just be upfront in stating what sort of community they would like to see and then acting as if it already existed, discontents would have to persuade admins that they were acting against their own interests and propose a more compelling way to achieve the stated utopia. If they don’t like the utopia at all, then those people can leave for Voat and new users who like that utopia might come to replace them. At the very least, if Reddit were to take this approach, users might actually start answering the question that is at the heart of the matter but is rarely stated in explicit terms: who gets to be a part of the community?

In this song Turkish Jews describe the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), when European armies were invading Edirne. Many Sephardic Jews served in the Ottoman Army. Until the 19th century the Spanish Jews who lived in Turkey were not yet serving in the Ottoman Army but in 1826 the Janissary soldiers revolted and they were disbanded by Sultan Mahmud, and as a result, the Sephardic Jews were gradually recruited as soldiers into the Turkish Army and many of them died during the Balkan Wars. The song is in Ladino, which is a version of old Spanish adopted by Sephardic Jews more than 500 years ago. In this song the city of Luleburgaz, where the Jewish Turkish soldier died, is located in Edirne near the Bulgarian border… Most interestingly, the last stanza lays the blame on King Ferdinand and his Edict of Expulsion (1492).

hey HEY so remember how wally was basically unemployed his entire life he never actually got a college degree and the only actual job he held was being a mechanic for a while and he was CONSTANTLY worried about his financial situation after he got married to linda and had kids bc linda stopped having a job to make sure irey and jai didnt die but he never once let his financial situation get in the way of his helping the people of keystone city whenever he could i mean the thought crossed his mind like once bc wally’s mind works like “i have a family but keystone city is also my family and i will protect them BOTH no matter what” wally west is the epitome of a superhero byeee

The sun burned hot; a fiery globe that threatened the wrath of the heavens down upon the mortal world. So too did the sun shine upon a city of pure gold, peaks of jade and sapphire glimmering in the light of day. Yet the peaks lay flawed; the pillars and temples rising to the heavens crooked and imperfect. Zandalar was sinking.

He’d seen Mercutio, he’d seen his wound. He knew it was all over. There was no going back, no undoing what he’d done. He’d never meant to – and yet, here he was, contemplating the facts. Mercutio was dead, and he’d killed him. It didn’t matter that he never meant to – that he was just playing into their old game. What was left for him to do? Surrender to the Prince’s edict – pay with his life. If the finest Capulet blade refused to fight, maybe others would follow. And so Juliet could grow up in a peaceful town, no longer having to fear for her life. If that was the last thing he did…

And so he did not fight back when Romeo ran towards him, sword in hand. What was the point?

He did not expect to wake up in Friar Lawrence’s cell, being told that he barely made it. That he was lucky. What business did he have saving him when the Prince would no doubt execute him. He’d killed his nephew, there would be no forgiveness. That is when the friar smiled enigmatically and told him the good news. Mercutio was alive. For now. He was not as lucky as Tybalt, and he was still hanging between life and death, barely breathing. A miracle only could save him, the friar said, and he and his brothers were all praying for the young man’s sake. And for his soul should he not make it, but Tybalt refused to even consider that possibility.

He was given a second chance, he did not die – and neither did Mercutio. He had to make it. What cruel fate would take him away now, now that Tybalt could hope against hope…

The friar wanted him to stay in bed, and to rest; but how could he when Mercutio was battling death. The friar soon gave in.

He did not know how much time he spent by his side, holding his hand – thinking how stupid they had been, hiding, pretending to hate, and even in the quiet of nights spent together, never admitting to anything. Praying, too, even though neither of them had ever believed. If there was a god, surely he had forsaken this city. But Tybalt was alive, Mercutio was alive – so maybe, maybe there was hope yet.

He was there when Juliet came to see them, and ask the friar for advice. Knowing Tybalt was alive, and no mourning needed, his uncle had decided to go through with the idea of marrying her to Paris. She looked at them, and smiled through her tears. He was there too when the friar came back and told him the two lovers had killed themselves, and Tybalt lost all hope. If Juliet, who saw the bright side of everything – even him – was no longer there… outside the families were reconciled, and mourned and celebrated together, so quick it was surreal.

“You need to wake up,” he begged Mercutio, “I can’t do this without you.”